While the buzz at last year’s NPE was all about Industry 4.0 and IIoT, there is also a lot going on to enable the drying process itself—as well as the plastics processes it serves—to become more efficient and produce higher quality output. Here are five of the top drying product developments in both categories from Novatec.
If floor space is a concern around your injection molding machines, this is something you’ll want to check out. Every injection molding process needs a mold temperature controller, and many have a press-side dryer too. Now you can have both on a single base. Through a partnership between drying expert Novatec and temp control specialist Advantage Engineering, the DryTemp+ was born. With a single control for both units, it saves time, effort and space.
To dry highly water-sensitive materials such as nylons, polyurethanes and PVTs, it’s critical to get the right balance between dewpoint and temperature. Even seasonal changes in the ambient humidity on the plant floor can make a difference, adding a process variable that can degrade product consistency and quality. Automatic moisture control is the answer, and now it’s available in press-side dryers.
In polymer development, the drying is often done in a nitrogen environment. Sometimes only after rolling the resin out to the plant floor do processors discover discoloration problems caused by oxidation as the material is heated. You have no choice but to go back to nitrogen drying, but that’s a pain. Novatec has come up with an ingeniously simple solution called NITROdry—an air input filter with a membrane that removes the oxygen, CO2 and water vaper from the air—that creates an oxygen-free environment in a conventional dryer.
While there are lots of claims out there on Industry 4.0 equipment monitoring, all are not created equal. Alarms are sufficient, but most only provide information after a negative event has occurred. Novatec’s DryerSense is different in that it analyzes both process and machine component data to identify electrical or mechanical issues that can be addressed before they become a problem.
Want to see some real Industry 4.0? Novatec’s DigiTwin is their concept of the future of plastics auxiliaries maintenance. With the plastics industry’s first X-ray telemetry diagnostic tool, this “digital twin” is a virtual replica of a machine that looks much more deeply at machine performance and component health. Born in the aerospace industry for real-time monitoring of aircraft engines, this technology is the future of predictive maintenance incorporated into plant-floor equipment.